Agents in contact centers frequently handle calls addressing a wide variety of subjects and topics for a particular business. Agents are expected to perform their duties efficiently and effectively, but in practice, it is challenging for the agent to follow all applicable policies, have answers to all the different questions that may be asked, and know how to handle unusual situations. Contact centers may have various policies which are to be followed in varying circumstances, but any given agent may not be experienced in handling each type of situation or recall the particular policy. The policies may range from ensuring the agent provides an appropriate greeting to the remote party on the call, to asking whether a customer would take a survey.
Other policies may be specific to the purpose of the call. For example, when soliciting charitable donations, the contact center may have a policy of the agent confirming that the donor is not a minor (e.g., under the age of 18). Other call handling actions expected from the agent may be transient in nature. For example, a call center for a retailer may be offering a special promotion for the current week for customers purchasing goods above a certain dollar amount. Further, the promotion or dollar amount may change each week. The agent is expected to keep abreast of current promotions, but in practice it is easy for the agent to forget the specific details, requirements, or policies.
Thus, it is not surprising that a contact center agent may forget to comply with a specific rule or policy. In other situations, the agent may be complying with the rule or policy, but an opportunity is presented for providing superior customer service that the agent may not readily recognize. To assist the agent, various aids may be made available to the agent to remind the agent or identify the opportunity to the agent. Many of these aids, however, do not provide the flexibility for recognizing various situations. For example, a recently hired or inexperienced agent may require more indicators or reminders to identify such opportunities as opposed to an experienced worker.
Further, many of these aids rely on providing solely textual or visual information that is displayed to the agent. For example, a pop-up window providing internal written policies may be provided to an agent during a call. However, if the agent is not within viewing distance of their workstation, is distracted by the conversation with the remote party, or is visually impaired, such aids may not be fully effective in assisting the agent. In some instances, the agent may be familiar with the policy details and just needs a high level reminder, as opposed to a detail text-based explanation of the procedures.
Thus, improved and simplified approaches are needed for providing information and reminders to an agent for assisting the agent's interaction with the remote party. Further, there is a need for tools to assist the agent that can be utilized by visually impaired agents or which do not solely depend on visually-based notifications to the agent.